Hi, guys. I don't post much here, but do visit for research now and again. I'm much more active on CZCC.com since my Z is mostly stock. But I thought I'd share this here as well, since I did some reading here on this subject prior to having this done.
I just got my '71 back yesterday after having the roof reskinned to eliminate the sunroof. Here are some before and after pictures. I don't have pictures of the process itself just yet, we couldn't get his camera to download to my laptop (bad USB cable, I think), so I'll have to wait for him to e-mail them to me before I can post them. Soon, I hope.
The guidecoat on the primer makes the roof look a bit wavy in the pictures. Trust me, it's not.
The work was done at Evolution Auto Body, a one-man shop (Scott Daniels) in Salem, OR, basically next door to ZTherapy. I don't know how many S30 roofs he has re-skinned, but I do know that mine was not his first, probably more like his fifth or sixth. I could tell the first time we talked that he knew exactly what he was doing. And he is incredibly affordable. I supplied the donor roof, and the total was all of $450! He invoiced me 14 hours at $30/hr. That included a couple hours to do a touch of rust repair under the windshield seal on the donor roof. I dropped the car off Monday afternoon, and picked it up late Friday, so four days. I can't recommend him enough for this type of work.
The job was fairly straightforward. Drill out all the spot welds on the donor panel to remove it intact, cut the bad roof off the car and grind down (not drill) the spot welds on the car, and re-weld the new panel into place. I'm certain that any competent sheet metal guy could do it, but I'm glad I picked one who has done it on these cars before. Scott also cleaned and applied a nice glossy epoxy to the underside before he welded it on as part of the job. Perhaps it's not a stiffener, but it sure seems like it might be. On the trip back home (60 miles) the car seemed much quieter, even without any headliner.
Now that the car is back home, I'm going to strip it the rest of the way down and deliver it to my local paint shop week after next. I would have let Scott do the whole re-paint, but he said he is so busy that he's not taking in any full repaints right now. But he said squeezing in a roof skin job was no problem. So I'll have the rest of the paint done locally.